This episode mostly isn't about sales. But every part of it is dripping with takeaways for sales pros.

In it, Darryl is joined by James #SayWhatSales Buckley, Chief Evangelist and Master of Ceremonies at JB Sales (aka J Barrows). In a bumper episode they talk the link between mental and physical health, how that can both impact and echoes your sales career, and an exceptional example of insight you need to pitch right.

🔗 LINKS

Find James on LinkedIn here, on Twitter here, on Instagram here, and on TikTok here. You'll find the Sell Better YouTube channel here. Find more about J Barrows at their website.

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn.

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How's everybody doing? Oh my goodness folks, it's another, it's another day. It's another day in the adventure, man. It's like every day I wake up and I'm like, I have so much to do. I have so much to do.

And I, and I started instantly thinking about meeting one meeting to meeting three. This person is going to be full of shit. This person is going to be conflict. This this person's going to be whiny. This person's going to want to deal. Ah, then I got to go talk to the boss. I got to set the stage. I'm going to ask for more money or more time or more, whatever. And it's going to, it's going to be a pain in the ass and I'm tired already. Where's my coffee. And I haven't gotten. That's how my day starts.

And it's interesting because some of what I just described, I mean, all what I describe as real, right? I mean, our jobs are our jobs, right? Hopefully you're, you're working to live and not living to work, but if you're working to live, you know, this is what I got to do, this pays the bills.

And hopefully, hopefully you like what you do. I love what I do as much as I bitch and moan and whine with that said, though, it's amazing how much of our mental wellbeing. And how we approach our job approach our profession. It's amazing how much of that is influenced and dictated by our physical wellbeing.

Not, I've never had this conversation on the show before I've talked about mindset. You gotta have the right mindset. You gotta be able to handle rejection. You gotta be able to have the right positivity. You gotta believe that what you're selling is going to make an impact and it's going to make people's lives better is you you're behind it. You got to realize that if they're yelling at you, they're just having a bad day and it's nothing personal it's mindset.

But I've never talked about how our physical wellbeing impacts our emotional, our mental relationships, attitude, ability to get shit done. That's a technical term. You can look it up, get shit done. GSD. There you go.

You may not know this folks. I am a proud lifetime member of weight Watchers. All right. Now there's a qualifier. I'm going to say here. So wouldn't mean a weight one. I don't know if this is still the case, but when I got my lifetime man, The criteria was you had to, you know, meet your goal weight as specified when you started the program.

And then you had a sustained that for you. I don't know, six months or something. And if you, if you did that, you became a lifetime member. And what that meant at the time was that you never had to pay. If you decide to come back to the program, you never had to pay the admission fee to start again. You still have to pay the weekly fees, but he never had to pay that one-time startup fee.

And so for me to be a lifetime member, I had to, I had to be over. And then I had to lose the weight and I did exactly that and I've got up and down. Usually I'm not making this up 40 pounds, 40 pounds. I go up and down oh five and right now I'm up. And the funny part is, if you look at what I eat, I don't drink a lot. The ongoing joke is if I, if I order a beer, if I finish the beer, that's remarkable and that's noteworthy. All right. That's the joke there. So I don't drink a lot. I like, I like drink. I just don't drink a lot. I don't eat a lot. My wife thinks I'm a fricking bird. I don't eat a lot. I fill up quickly. Yet I'm 40 pounds overweight.

For me, a lot of my week is gained through stress. So that's been proven if you have too much stress in your life for some people, they, the consequence of that is they gain weight for other people. They lose their hair for other people. They have other manifestations. Our physical body is a statement of where we are often and our journey in our job and how it rolls over to our personal life as well.

I know when I'm overweight, like I am. I get winded faster. I don't have the same energy, you know, someplace three quarters for the day. I'm like, I'm ready to take a nap. You know, that's that's me. And how do I compensate for that? I compensate for that with more coffee. I said, is he here drinking coffee from my wonderful Ember cup that a former employee got me because they just thought I was a great boss. Isn't that a great thing? It's my coffee. I need that.

Anyway. Why do I bring. I bring this up because it's not January, so I'm not going to, there's nothing theme-based here. I'm not saying it's back to school or it's, it's a new year. It's resolution time. It is neither back to school, nor is it January. I bring this up because of two reasons.

One. I know I'm 40 pounds overweight and I need to lose the weight. And it's been on my mind for a long time too. I have been seeing these annoying posts on LinkedIn and Twitter from this guy. If you know who I'm talking about, this guy who is on this journey, apparently I think he's doing this for attention, he was diagnosed with diabetes and decided I should probably get my shit together and lose some weight because that's, you know, that's pretty. It's got some serious consequences.

Welcome to the show, my friend, how are you?

Now for those who don't know John Barrows I was just going to J Barrows, B A R R O W S .com. jbarrows.com. Phenomenal site, sales training, coaching resources galore, videos, live events. They work with the who's who of the industry. Check them out. That's the sole pitch I'll make for John Barrows.

I've been on his show multiple times. John and I, total sidebar, but I don't know if you've noticed this, James, you may have, John and I don't always agree. We often butt heads on points of view. You may find that shocking, but we often often do.

And that's the beauty of our industries that you're going to have different points of view and still sit back, kicked out, kicked back and laugh. It's okay.

I use what you had on your LinkedIn, what do you want? Is it, is it Buckley 10 30 or does it say what sales?

Now we have to have fun with this before we get into the topic at hand. For those who don't know, because , hey, we're a sales show. This Chief Revenue Officer of J Barrows is Chris Merrill. And James, can we just agree that both you and I are way better looking and smarter than Chris Merrill?

So we stopped and now we're back. So we may backtrack a little bit and cover some of the topics that he and I had already covered. And then we'll go off in tangents. So folks sit back relaxes. We are, I want to be clear kids. We're not telling you what to do. What we're going to share with you is James's journey.

And if you get some value out of this, God bless you. Share the episode, run with it. Be inspired by it. If nothing else, it'll be a fun conversation. So if you're out running, you're doing whatever you want to do. You're in the shower, you're in the car. Kick back, relax, turn it up loud. We're going to have some fun.

All right, James, you're on this journey. I alluded to a little bit of kind of type two diabetes. If I recall correct me. If I get that wrong. What you're on this journey you've been on for roughly six months now, what was the catalyst to start this? And have you done this before?

I was having a hard. Going like making it through the night without having to get up to pee. I was having, I was like constantly thirsty, no matter how much water I drank, both of those are signs of diabetes. But if I'm thirsty and drinking, a lot of water, my brain immediately is like, well, yeah, I got to pee, I'll look at all this water I'm drinking. Like I got to pee. Right.

And then as a husband, our wives tell us things and you know, we tune you out. Like, that's just what we do. So when they're like, you're probably type two diabetic, we're like, oh, I wasn't even a doctor. Like you don't know, like, so you move on with your life and you go about it.

Well, here comes my father-in-law with his testing kit and he's like, you know what? Let's find out right now. Take your finger. Let's prick your finger and let's find out what your blood sugar is. So I was like, all right, well, let's do it. Let's figure it out. So he tested my sugar and it was a 467. Now, for those of you that don't have the context here, a normal person, their pancreas works like this.

Their blood sugar is anywhere from 90 to 120 and that's healthy. That's considered a healthy insulin, creating pancreas. 467 means my pancreas stopped creating insulin to process sugar. Just straight up was like, James, you don't need me anymore. I'm all set.

So, so I freaked out, right? Because apparently I need my pancreas. I only get one. I quickly changed my diet and I lost like 20 pounds quickly. Like within 30, 40 days I lost like 15, 20 pounds just changing my diet and testing all the time. Like pricking my finger, like six, seven times a day, like, oh gosh, like, how is it? How's it going? Is it going by that? Am I seeing a drop?

And then it hit me about three, four weeks before Christmas, about a month before Christmas. That was like, I learned that. The amount of lean mass that you have on your body, it helps to dictate how much insulin your pancreas creates. So once I learned this, I thought to myself, well, I guess I'm going to become a weight lifter. That's the way to go.

So here I go, I go to the gym. Now, most people would go to the gym on new year's and they would set a new year's resolution that they know is bullshit, and they probably will not go through with it. I did not wait. I woke up, I put an hour on my calendar and I drove to the gym and I said, I want the I want a personal trainer twice a week, and I want an annual membership and I want to pay for it. All right now upfront.

This is something that most personal trainers, most gyms never hear from candidates walking through the door. So after some negotiation, we managed to find a price in a package that worked for me, I'm a sales professional so negotiation was a must.

We landed on twice a week, personal training and an annual membership. And I am in there five days a week, Monday through Friday, and I use the weekends to rest my body so that I can come back strong on front, on Mondays.

In less than six months, I've dropped about, it's still about 30 pounds. I'm only about 30 pounds down. I am up eight, I'm up eight to 12% in lean mass. I got to do a new scan coming up. We use a for this really interesting. And I'm down anywhere from 20 to 30% in things like visceral fat, which is the fat that jiggles when you shake your arm. Right. So I'm watching it.

So I went from type two diabetic to now, recently diagnosed as pre-diabetic in less than six months with just consistency and a personal trainer twice a week. And I'm eating mostly plants at this point. I do have chicken, white meat, chicken, but it's mostly plants at this point.

So you're like, why is this happening? It's the cholesterol and the salt intake. That's, that's creating this. That's why I went to mostly plants. So now I went from eating six eggs a day to eating two eggs a day. And then my lunch is like just one vegetable. Just pick a vegetable, asparagus, broccoli, peppers, whatever your vegetable is, just eat that for lunch. It's just a veggie lunch. Have a salad if you want to, you know

But, but then I have a nice healthy dinner with all the food groups represented. I'm not cutting out carbs. Let me be clear. Exclusion diets are not what my trainer believes in. So I have a very smooth portion control guide that uses my hand and I'm going by that.

But the side hustle here, the thing I did not expect, and the real test that was surprising to me was I've seen a legit correlation. I can't prove causation, but I can prove correlation between my physical wellbeing, my health and wellness focus and my professional development and growth. I am easily five times more productive now going to the gym every day and exerting that energy in the mornings throughout my workday than I ever thought about being before I started on this journey.

The activity levels are up, the results the response rates are up, the engagement is up. I do more posts now than ever before. My energy level is through the roof and it was that way before, but now it's like twice as much. So it's really been amazing to see that up into the right hockey stick as I've progressed through this fitness journey.

I'm trying to go heavy protein on my breakfast anyway, because I know that that protein helps to recover and repair learning a lot about nutrition has been a good portion of this journey because I didn't know anything about it. I've been eating like trash for 40 years. Like I eat like an American eats Burger King and Wendy's like,

That's one of the four core groups I thought?

And all of that is because you need your heart rate. I'll again, big learning curve for me. I've learned a lot lately. You need your heart rate to be at its peak to be high before you start lifting, because it's the way your metabolism works. It's the way your body processes, all of this strain that you're about to go through.

There's also a stretching point before I start the cardio. I do about five, 10 minutes of stretching. So yeah, I might only work with. I might only lift for 30 to 45 minutes, but the strength and conditioning, the cardio and the stretching is at least another 45 minutes. So you spend a little bit of time getting ready to do the actual work. I'm amazed at the difference this is all made.

This was one of the toughest things that I've done here in a long time, but it let me know just how out of shape I was, number one. Number two, it let me know that I'm not ready for that step yet. I need to drop a few more pounds. I need to get familiar with the stretching and the moving before you just dive into it.

The other part of it is, is that. Like most humans, I'm comparing myself to everyone else in this room and they've been coming here for years. This is my first class. So I can't move the way they move, but I'm watching them all going, man, this is so amazing. Like I bet these people are never in. Like, there's just so many different things that we could do for our health and wellness.

It doesn't have to be lifting weights. It doesn't have to be dieting. It can be yoga, it can be cardio, it can be stretching. It can be all these things, whatever it is that you need it to be, do it consistently. And you're going to see that same uptick in all of your life aspects, up into the right.

No, it's a journey. Listen to what James is saying. He's saying it's a journey. Six months later. Look at the difference it's already had on me, but what's he doing? James is investing in himself a, he put his own money on the line. He wasn't looking for his employer to pay for and own his success. He put his own money the lime and then see, he was gave himself a mindset that this is a process and it will take time. All right. Sales, same way. These are the same.

Last question that I want to go back to where you wrapped up on the impact it's had on you, which is, so you say you go five days a week. What's your time. Are you there from like 9- 11? You know, 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM. Like,

By the time I'm at the gym. I do my stretch. I do my cardio, I get my heartbeat up and then I hit it. I'm there for a grand total of an hour, hour and 10 minutes at the maximum. And I go from session to session. So exercise to exercise, active rest is what I call it. If I just did chest, I'm going to pump out my rep of 10 and then I'm going to hop over and I'm going to do squats, holding a 50 pound dumbbell while my arms were.

Then I'm going to jump back on the bench and do the next set. And I'm going to do both of those back and forth three sets. And then I choose two more things and I'll do that. Sometimes it sets of three things, right? I do this for as long as I can until I just can't stand it anymore. It's usually about 45 minutes or so.

And then I leave, I come home, I throw in my veggies and my 10 inch pan, a little bit of olive oil cook all the veggies up. I put it in a bowl, do my two eggs over medium, put them right on top. I'm sitting right next to my computer. I hop over and I start my day, but it's only like 7:00 AM, 7:30 AM.

So then for the next hour and a half, I'm working, I'm, I'm clearing out my inbox. I'm clearing out my inbox. I'm responding to the LinkedIn messages. I miss last night, I'm talking to people internationally that have, you know, they're in the middle of their afternoon. I'm using that time to my advantage because no one is awake yet. I'm not getting pinged from 10,000 things distracting me from my goals at that moment. So I can use that hour and a half to really push. And because I'm jazzed up from the exercise, man, I get a lot done in that hour and a half.

And then I go hop in the shower when everybody gets out of bed and comes to, to, to, to the, to the table. And I, I I've been the game for the rest of the day and usually I'm live two or three times a day.

So. You know, it's a lot of engagement and stuff like that, but my energy level is just so high throughout the rest of the day, because of that workout, it like sets the tone for how the day is going to go. And I find that no matter what comes my way, I've got this incredibly positive response almost every time now.

I had a high energy level before, when I went to the doctor for the first time after being diagnosed, that was the first thing he said was people with type two diabetes, typically struggle with energy levels. They have a hard time getting up and getting going. They need a lot of coffee to get going. And I said, dude, I don't know who you're talking to.

That ain't me. Yep. I get up at five in the morning and I'm talking to people in Ireland. Like, I don't know what, that's not me, man. I get up amped up to be alive, you know, but that's because of my background I have a whole different life.

The dream. Is very real, but here's the good part about that? I sleep like a baby. I am out and I get the most restful sleep. You couldn't wake me up if you try it.

And I think what we forget is that it's more than just listening or taking or applying the lessons from the crew at J Barrows. It's about investing in yourself, investing in your skills, investing in your gear, investing in your schedules, investing in your discipline to be successful at what you do.

And the upside is if you do that, you see it in other areas of your life. Like James has talked about his relationship with his family, his relationship with his clients, you know, just as general positivity, how it's changed. Not to mention, we didn't talk about this. We talked about this in the green room.

The, when you went from being diagnosed to going, pre-diabetic now your latest diagnosis, you're not take, you don't have to take the meds anymore, which means you're saving some money there to,

Obviously that saves you a lot of money because medication is expensive, but let's talk about sales for just a moment. If I can, when I went live

Number one. They had no idea, no clue who I was or what I did for a living. So they came at me really fast and strong, hard, and a lot of their messaging hinges on one basic premise you should be, and probably are miserable because you don't look like me.

And when I tell you that is the worst possible response approach that you can have with somebody that's out of shape, they will never respect respond to you positively, if that is your approach.

Personal trainers out there that are listening to this and wondering how you can improve your sales process, stop judging people and assuming that you know who they are and what they want, by the way that they look, that is the worst approach that you could have.

I probably chewed out 150 personal trainers, and I would ask them, what do you know about what I do for a living? They don't even care. They would just move on to the next thing. What are your weight loss goals? You know, and you're like, dude, are you going to acknowledge the fact that I just asked you a question?

Well, what's stopping you from hitting those goals, right? They don't acknowledge the fact that I'm speaking to them. And you want me to think you're going to give a shit about my health. It's unlikely that that's going to be the conclusion that I draw.

Salespeople in SAAS and technology do the same thing. I send you an email and I say, oh, I see you went to the university of Maryland and then immediately pivot to my shit. That's not relevant to the university of Maryland. John tells that story a lot.

We have to acknowledge what people are saying back to us. When they said, what are your fitness goals? They were expecting me to throw out a number. They wanted a weight loss number. What I said was I need my pancreas to work. Think you can help me with that. Every single one of them never responded. Cause they don't know shit about.

So you've got to know your prospect and you have to care about what it is they do and what they're going through and acknowledge the fact that they're speaking to them and personal trainers out there, hear me: stop telling people they should be miserable because they don't have a six pack. Like you that's bullshit. I am the happiest dude you'll ever meet. And I don't appreciate that approach in any way, shape or form.

Assume you want to have a six pack, right. Or tell me that you want to, you know, achieve a certain goal. And all it takes is them to ask a question and engage in a conversation. I mean, for frig sake, Relationship 101, that's that's discovery 101, that's qualification 101 this? I mean, we teach at length about this guys and there's too many people trying to take shortcuts because it's a numbers game. It's bullshit.

I watch it every day. James, I see our own reps and reps at other clients I've I've helped or that I've worked with have these activity numbers. And they're saying, well, we can't hit our activity numbers. If we hit our activity numbers, we're not hitting the number of conversations. Right.

So sure. I put the a hundred dollars in, but I didn't have the conversations I wanted to because, well it's because your pitch was brutal. There was no personalization. There's no context. There's no relevance. And they said, well, we don't have time to do that. I'm like, what are we measuring? Are we measuring activity? We measure outcomes because I don't care if you do 10 calls or a hundred calls. I do care. If you have like two or three conversations a day.

Setting a meeting that is unqualified might as well not set that meeting. Just skip. It's an important factoid. I use that word a lot these days, that it's the responsibility of SDRs to qualify opportunities. That's what you should be getting paid on and leaders out there. I'll say this to you. You should be qualifying these demos that are scheduled by SDRs and they should not be paid on SDR scheduled demos that have not been qualified and don't yield an opportunity I believe.

And I've thought this for a very long. An SDR should be paid on the number of opportunities created, not the number of meetings set though. Leadership should still provide a set target for the number of meetings set, but they should all be qualified and yield to opportunities no?

If your criteria is they have a certain headcount. If your criteria is they're located in a certain region and sell to a specific vertical, those could be your qualifications. And if an SDR covers those basis, check, check, check that decision on whether or not it's qualified to yield. An opportunity is no longer in the, in the, in the hands of the AE, but

Is it about activities or is it about, you know, qualified opera? He used the term qualified opportunities, but it's gotta be something that is. At the end of the day, it's all we care about. We don't care about the vanity metrics. We care about how much pipeline do I have. That's what we care about.

So here's my, here's my challenge to leaders. And this is what I think people should start doing. Allow that rep to close two or three small deals. Okay. Don't coach them. They think they're ready. They believe that they can take that step with ease. So go ahead and give them the green light on accounts that are very specific and small.

When they fail you can now justify keeping them in the SDR role, but continuing them on a path of learning so that when they really are ready, they won't doubt it ever again. And they'll believe more in your leadership.

Folks, we are way over. I want to have James back in the future. We're not going to wait nearly as long and next time we'll talk true sales. But the beauty of James is he is a wealth of knowledge. You just, you just at the tail end there, you just started to hear a smidge of this man,

J Barrows, that's where you want to go check them out. Follow him on LinkedIn, follow him on Twitter. You heard him say he's live two and three times a day, consume his content. You didn't need to consume that content today. Today, we were focused on sharing his journey and the impact is made on him. And you want to share it with you as did I, because we care about you.

So hopefully this helps hopefully somebody, maybe, you know, that needs to hear this episode. This is real. This is approachable. This is life. It's all cool.

Commit to yourself the same way you commit to your craft to send me commit to your loved ones and you will be a success.

That's James I'm Daryl. We'll see you next week. Take care.

This episode was digitally transcribed.